Does anyone know or have any information, about feeding grass silage to goats. I have a method of making small amounts of silage I want to try out, but I am not sure if, firstly the goats will eat it and secondly how much they should be expected to eat per day.

__________________
SALLY AND QUENTIN, English couple living in Bulgaria . We have a small herd of goats, and we produce a range of dairy products for sale. You can find us at www.facebook.com/cherrytreegoats
Owners of the motley crew; 4 Anglo Nubian does 1 Anglo Nubian buck, 1 Bulgarian White Dairy buck ( basically a Saanen ) 1, 75% BWD buck, 8 cross bred BWD/local breed does and 5 local breed does.

This is a pretty good article on silage (both corn silage and haylage) for goats. Silage has a bad rep in the goat world, but I think that is mainly because it's a lot trickier to harvest, pack and store silage than it is for hay, PLUS, and I think that is the main problem: silage need 'feed speed', if the face of your silage pit is exposed to open air too long, you get spoilage and the spoiled silage will greatly increase risk of health problems and also taste/smell problems in your milk. If you have a way of storing silage in (relatively small) bags and have enough does to feed the silage before it spoils (or if you have a neighbor dairyman you can share silage with to increese feeding speed), you can have excellent results with silage. Goats being goats, and therefore browsers (very different from cows) I think I'd still offer hay on the side.

As soon as I see a way how to, I will try feeding silage. Right now my herd isn't large enough and the closest dairy farm not someone I'd could work with to pick up small, daily loads of silage, so i'm sticking to hay, bread and a grain mix right now.

Anyway, this article says 4-5 lbs of silage for milking does is a good amount and that sounds about right. Let us know how it goes for you, Quentin, I'd be very interested!!

I used to board my horses at an old dairy farm that didn't have dairy cows anymore but still had the silage pits....and they were still feeding their silage from about 12 years ago to the current population of long-horn cows! I couldn't believe it. And they were open pits. The stuff smelled just like the silage I remember from the dairy farms of my youth. Apparantly cows are a little more tolerant to molds than goats are.

I used to board my horses at an old dairy farm that didn't have dairy cows anymore but still had the silage pits....and they were still feeding their silage from about 12 years ago to the current population of long-horn cows! I couldn't believe it. And they were open pits. The stuff smelled just like the silage I remember from the dairy farms of my youth. Apparantly cows are a little more tolerant to molds than goats are.

Oh, wow. Kudos to the digestive systems of those longhorn cows!!! Yuck, and thank goodness they apperently didn't milk those poor longhorns!

Thanks for the input, Trysta, the method I am using is know as " little bag silage " and was originaly devoloped by and English man called Ian Laine, for use in Northern India. I have has several e-mail conversations with him, and he told me he had great succses using this method for goats. I made 2 bags as a trial, using this method yesterday adding a little sugar to the bags, as he told me too, to aid fermantation, but I have to wait a month to see the results. If you google
little bag silage you will find all the info including methods and photos.

__________________
SALLY AND QUENTIN, English couple living in Bulgaria . We have a small herd of goats, and we produce a range of dairy products for sale. You can find us at www.facebook.com/cherrytreegoats
Owners of the motley crew; 4 Anglo Nubian does 1 Anglo Nubian buck, 1 Bulgarian White Dairy buck ( basically a Saanen ) 1, 75% BWD buck, 8 cross bred BWD/local breed does and 5 local breed does.

Quentin, that is very interesting. I used to work on a research farm in The Netherlands and we did some ensiling research using a variety of systems, including small bags and PVC pipes! I will google the Little Bag site, because I am thinking of making some silage for my does this summer (haylage actually, from my Alfalfa). As an additive sugar will definitely work, but if you have access to them silage additives with live bacteria actually have great results and woul;d work too in smallerf amounts.